We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leah Gravis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Leah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
Starting my own business has been the biggest risk I’ve ever taken. It is akin to being in a high-stakes room at the casino: you are gambling with your life, your comfort and your future. I’m not even much of a gambler, but I put everything on the table to start my business. I had very little to start with. I took the biggest tax refund I had ever gotten ($7500), bought a computer and small plotter to start working out of my house. I had been laid off of my job, I had no savings, bad credit, two small children, and a dream that I could provide for my family better by working for myself instead of someone else. I was lucky to have supportive parents that helped me cover some monthly expenses, but they couldn’t provide everything. I had to go all in on this business or I wouldn’t survive. I worked tirelessly, mostly because I couldn’t sleep knowing that there was work to be done in the next room, but eventually after a year and half was able to bring my sales and revenue up enough that I was providing for my family and could afford to move into my first commercial space. Now after 12 years, I continue to double down on my business to grow. I believe that the business realm is the largest casino in the world, and if I am willing to take risks on investing in myself, the returns will always be great.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was always artistic growing up, my stepdad was a construction contractor and I would work for him in the summers, but when I went to college, I thought I was better at science than art. So I had started a degree path for biology, and after the first year realized I had no idea what I was doing. I transferred into the art program the next year, but then realized I somehow needed to make this a career if I wanted to do anything with the degree I was paying for. I didn’t want to be a starving artist, so I focused on graphic design and commercial art. I was able to get an internship in an offset printing shop, but when that ended, I was stuck looking for a job. I moved from Colorado to California, and got hired at a sign shop in San Diego as a graphic designer. I knew nothing about signs. I was amazed at how many things “signs” encompassed, and the industry was expanding in all directions, wide format digital printing had just come out as the most recent technology available. As I learned more about signage, I quickly understood that the process was a marrying of art and construction, and I was hooked.
When I started my own business, I had been working in the sign industry many years already, and couldn’t think of anything else I would want to take on because I loved it so much. The variety and excitement of seeing the creations come to life is wonderful! So at Blue Line Signs, we don’t make one type of sign, we make everything. We are a complete custom sign shop that caters to each client’s personality and vision because that’s what makes small (or even big) businesses great. We help our clients be ready for business, whether it’s opening, beautifying and inspiring, marketing and advertising, or even closing. I am most proud of our awesome and talented team we’ve built because they are the grease that keeps the wheels turning. Everyone genuinely cares about the finished product and how it makes our clients feel about their brand and business. We want our clients to be successful too!
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
When I started my business, I had a lot of learning to do. I didn’t even understand the term capital, and I didn’t know how to get it. I also had bad credit, so no lender was going to give me money. I started with the little cash I had, and bootstrapped the business by paying myself extremely little in order to reinvest the money I was earning through sales. The more frequent and larger sales I made, the more my bank account grew. I was almost afraid of paying myself because I didn’t want to take too much from the business, even though many experts say, “Pay yourself first.” I had a hard time with it because I was already used to earning so little.
When you’re a small business owner, everything is tied to your personal credit score, so I had to do a lot of work to being mine up. Over a few years, I was able to bring my credit up and qualify for equipment loans that I could afford. I also learned that it is very difficult to get business credit, and that lenders that may give you a loan for equipment purchases may not report payments like on personal credit. You have to request credit reporting and sometimes even have to pay more to the lending company for them to report it. Now that my credit is much higher, I qualify for larger loans and lines of credit.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Money is not evil. I had to unlearn, “Money is the root of all evil.” I grew up in a very religious Episcopalian household, and one of the things that my brother and I were taught was that money was bad, that there was a limited amount of money in the world, and that only people who had grifted their money from someone else were rich. As much as I love my parents, they didn’t teach us the truth about money, nor how to manage it. It was always something that someone else had.
I had to learn about money: how to make sales to get it, how to manage it, and how to keep it coming back to me in a circular flow that I get to take from every now and again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bluelinesigns.com
- Instagram: bluelinesignstulsa
- Facebook: BlueLineSigns
- Linkedin: Blue Line Signs Tulsa
Image Credits
Blue Line Signs